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electronica with emotion

Monthly Archives: June 2012

My last album ” Expert Tiger , Mediocre Troll “ , which was No.1 in the juno download chart last year , is now available on Bandcamp , either to stream ( in its entirety ) , or buy for the modest sum of £7.

Nice mixture of Detroit Techno and IDM , with an absolutely relentless beat throughout , mixed with rich soundtrack pads , interspersed with my usual melodic gymnastics. The original working title was ” Doc Ock ” as it was the first thing that came into my head at the time , but I changed it to Omega on the last draft.

This isn’t the final version as there are still some tweaks to be made. Just wanted to upload something to show I’m not sitting on my hands.

This is a small cross-section of Omega’s track arrangement screen. More complex than it sounds , but still quite serene compared with others I’ve made. Click on the picture to enlarge it .

If music is a question……FL studio , for me , is the closest thing to an answer..

Yes , it has gained something of a reputation for being a bit “cheap” sounding , but I would counter this accusation by saying that maybe because it is so intuitive and accessible , it attracts many beginners , who produce less than quality output.

My experiences with FL studio are those of needing to express something , opening up FL , auditioning sounds in the browser instantly , right-click , BANG ! straight into a piano roll which I can arrange till my hearts content , for hours if I need to. Creating beats can be done in mere minutes , with as much intricacy as I can imagine.

In short….I need my inspiration to get from my mind and onto the screen as quickly as possible , before the inspiration is gone again , and as any musician knows , inspiration can be fleeting , like holding cupped hands full of water and watching it trickle through your fingers. They say the shortest distance between 2 points is a straight line , and for me FL studio is that no-nonsense bridge I need.

I can get the skeleton of a track down in usually 30 to 60 minutes , and then i can spend days , weeks , months or as long as I want , putting on muscle , skin , ligaments etc……

Aside from the huge amount of included innovative features , one of the major appeals to the program is the fact that I get free updates for life. Every time a new version comes out , I get it for free !!!!

How many other music software manufacturers are doing this ?

When was the last time Steinberg gave away a fully functional version for free ?

I can’t see me ever changing to another DAW. Ableton is maybe the only one that would tempt me , but with performance mode coming in FL studio 11 , maybe FL will start to regain the territory they lost to ableton , when they released the very capable Ableton Live , which , I never really took to , due to it feeling so squashed and cramped.

I’m also in good company , with some other power users being Mike Oldfield , Matthew Dear , Wisp , Deadmau5 etc…….

Anyway , I’ll hopefully be talking more about FL studio , and sharing stuff in the near future , as time permits , but right now my dog needs a walk.

“Incredible album, incredible tracks. Delicate textures with smart beats with beautiful melodies in the same time. An excellent compilation to make me feel evolving as a human being. Congratulations for all producers. I’m waiting for the next.”

was just playing around and came up with this in-betweener. It won’t feature on any EPs or albums….at least not in its present form anyway. It’s not good enough for full release . I just uploaded it cos it’s not overly bad , and someone may like it , even in its current , rushed incarnation.

Again I used Krakli k700. I also used ZebraCM in places. All the beats were handcrafted from oneshots , and fed into a nefarious machine that smashed their atoms into nucleic debris , and subsequently carefully pieced them together again with countless robotic arms , egg cartons , and lots of sellotape.

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Work in progress. Just uploading it as a teaser of what i’m currently up to. Plenty of music to come. This one features Synth1 ( freeware ) and a lot of synths by Krakli software , of which I’ve become a big fan.

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make the beats for this. I also used RGC audio Triangle 2 , and Contralogic Cadencia with my own custom preset making that delayed modulated lead at the beginning. The track has been around for a few years now , and was originally called mirror , but after half-watching demolition man last night , all I could see were driverless cars and monorails……the clean sleek lines of a future transit system , and the title seemed to fit those images , so I changed the name to Metroplex. I don’t know whether to release it as a better version on the forthcoming NEO ep , or another future ep or album , but this is how it sits for now.